Disaster Fatigue

Let’s inventory what is going on right now — in the way of disasters, both human-caused and natural.

• Hurricane Henri is making landfall as I write this
• The Haiti earthquake is a humanitarian disaster without the international help that they got in 2010
• Heat waves and resulting deaths
• Drought
• Wildfires in western states and the resulting national smoke plume
• Afghanistan
• The COVID-19 pandemic, with a fourth wave caused by the delta variant
• Climate change being highlighted by melting glaciers
• Flooding in the U.S. and around the world

Did I miss any big ones?

Even here in the place I live, a fire at a cold storage plant made the national news last night.

All of the above highlights the unstable world we live in. The role of emergency management has never had a higher profile and I think with climate change having more and more impacts the importance of effective emergency management programs will become even more critical.

Certainly the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cannot keep up the pace they are on without additional people and resources. As staff bounce from one disaster to another, there is a body of work that never really gets completed — with disaster recovery sometimes taking many years or even decades to be completed.

One piece of advice I have for people looking to enter our profession is that you cannot be a perfectionist. We don’t have the resources to address every hazard or issue we are facing. You just have to do the best you can with the resources you have.